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Emerging markets bond issuance remained buoyant this week, despite the traditional year-end lull, with Barclays advising on over half of the near $10bn in debt sold to investors.

More than $4bn of issues priced on Wednesday alone, across a range of issuer types and nationalities.

In the sovereign sector, Latvia and Morocco were active with a $1.25bn seven-year transaction and a $1.5bn dual-tranche deal comprising 10 and 30-year tranches, respectively.

Two corporate issues from Russia completed the tally, a 17.5bn rouble ($565m) six-year trade from the Federal Grid of Russia, rated BBB, and a sub-investment grade five-year deal of $750m from fertiliser company Eurochem.

Deals earlier in the week included issues from Saudi issuer Gulf International Bank and the Turkish Vakif Bank. Russian gas company Novatek followed Thursday with an offering of loan participation notes.

Barclays dominated proceedings, acting as bookrunner on $5.94bn of the transactions, 60% of the total volume of $9.89bn, across seven out of 11 deals.

Citi came second in the weekly bookrunner ranking, acting as an arranger on 42% of total volume.
Barclays also outperformed in terms of the amount of paper placed with investors per bank: the UK bank was responsible for 13.8% of total distribution, compared to Citi’s 10.5%.

Emerging markets bond issuance for the year-to-date totals more than $453bn, up 50% on last year’s tally over the same period, according to Dealogic.

“New money continues to flow into emerging markets,” said one syndicate banker involved in the sector. “Given what’s been happening in Europe, often it’s an easier call to make than some of the supposedly more established markets."

“The way Thanksgiving fell this year meant everyone felt there could be a window in the first two weeks of the month,” said Fabianna del Canto, a director in the London syndicate team at Barclays.

She added: “There was a bit of a backlog from last month due to Hurricane Sandy, which meant the possibility of supply this week was there if conditions remained supportive.”

A diverse range of credits received a strong reception from investors, who were able to pick up financial, corporate and sovereign paper in both investment grade and high-yield format.

“The diversity of issuers helps when you have different types of portfolios and analysts,” said del Canto.

“Those investors making decisions on a portfolio looking at buying credits like Morocco or Latvia aren’t going to be the same ones looking at an investment grade corporate deal.”

Jonathan Brown, head of Barclays’s European bond syndicate, attributed the bank's success to its global reach and emerging markets expertise:

“We’re equally equipped to help clients across euros, dollars and sterling. We have a very strong team on the desk, which means there is a real flexibility on execution. We are able to have a very senior focus on ever deal, even when we are busy, which is very important for our borrowing clients,” he said.